More animal shelters needed
published: Thursday | September 8, 2005

THE EDITOR, Sir:

FURTHER TO Ayala Bennett's timely letter published on September 4, we at The Animal House Jamaica concur heartily with the call for more animal shelters across the island. At the moment there are only two, the Animal House on the north coast and the much longer established and the larger Jamaica Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in St. Catherine. The obstacle to achieving this goal is serious community and corporate support because without this - and we can say this from experience - the task of rescuing, treating, spaying/neutering and re-homing abandoned, injured and abused animals can be a thankless and onerous task.

Finding sufficient funding within Jamaica is very difficult and although there are some notable exceptions (to whom we are very grateful) by and large' the everyday reality is that donations don't match budgetary needs and far too often there is not enough money to do what needs to be done. We also encourage vets to donate their services to help on the cause. At the same time, we ask that the Ministry of Agriculture respond to our request (made several months ago) to issue permits to an international veterinary society which is willing to come to Jamaica and initiate a free spay/neuter programme geared towards population control. This programme has worked very well on other Caribbean islands and is desperately needed in Jamaica.

As for increasing public awareness re diseases such as leptospirosis - this is especially important in light of the current panic created by a veterinarian's recent assertion that we were experiencing an alarming increase in the transference of the disease from rats to dogs (thereby putting humans at risk), which now appears to have been erroneous. As long as people remain uneducated they only remember the words of the newspaper headlines and based on that become fearful and attack helpless and harmless dogs (The Star, September 2).

I am. etc.,

MAUREEN SHERIDAN

P.O. Box 775

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